page_title: Albert Grey, 4th Earl Grey
section_title: Youth, education, and early career
hierarchical_section_title: Albert Grey, 4th Earl Grey / Youth, education, and early career
caption_attribution_description: Shakespeare Society, Cambridge, 1873 Manuscript on margins of photograph: "Shakspeare [sic] Society. Long vacation 1873 GC Macaulay, BE Hammond, JG Butcher, AT Lyttelton, AH Grey, TO Harding, RC Jebb"
context_page_description: Albert Henry George Grey, 4th Earl Grey GCB GCMG GCVO PC was a British nobleman and politician who served as Governor General of Canada, the ninth since Canadian Confederation. He was a radical Liberal aristocrat and a member of a string of liberal high society clubs in London. An active and articulate campaigner in late Victorian England he was associated with many of the leading Imperialists seeking change.
  Albert Grey was born into a noble and political family, though at birth not in direct line to inherit the earldom. His father General Charles Grey was a younger brother of the 3rd earl, who died without issue. As General Grey was deceased, the titles descended to his eldest living son Albert, then in his forties. Albert was educated at Harrow School before going up to Trinity College, Cambridge, where he graduated MA and LLM.
  In 1878, he entered into politics as a member of the Liberal Party and, after relinquishing a tied vote to his opponent, eventually won a place in the British House of Commons in 1880.
context_section_description: Grey was the younger and only surviving son of General Sir Charles Grey—a younger son of former British prime minister the second Earl Grey and later the private secretary to Prince Albert and later still to Queen Victoria—and his wife, Caroline Eliza Farquhar, eldest daughter of Sir Thomas Harvie Farquhar, Bt, at Cadogan House, Middlesex. Many members of the family had enjoyed successful political careers based on reform, including to colonial policies; Grey's grandfather, while prime minister, championed the Reform Act 1832 and in 1846, Grey's uncle, the third Earl Grey, as Secretary of State for War and the Colonies during the first ministry of Lord John Russell, was the first to suggest that colonies should be self-sustaining and governed for the benefit of their inhabitants, instead of for the benefit of the United Kingdom.
  Grey was educated at Harrow School and then Trinity College, Cambridge, where he studied history and law. After graduating in 1873, Grey became private secretary to Sir Henry Bartle Frere and, as Frere was a member of the Council of India, Grey accompanied Prince Albert Edward, Prince of Wales, on his tour of India. In 1877, Grey married Alice Holford, daughter of Robert Stayner Holford, the Member of Parliament for East Gloucestershire. Together, they had five children, one of whom died in early childhood.
caption: Grey in 1873 (front row, second from right), Shakespeare Society, Trinity College, Cambridge
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